cgraves67:It's not a BAD idea, but there are too many bad things about it.

What happens if it runs out of batteries?

Does it lock when the wrong person grabs it or does it unlock when the right person grabs it?

Gloves?

How easy is it to reprogram? Would it be a hinderance to reselling it person-to-person?

Presumably, you would need licensed software and a USB cable or something similar in order to reprogram it. Criminals are *never* able to get ahold of illegal copies of software, right?

I think it's a neat idea, if the sensor mechanism picks up the right person with more reliability than the chance to jam the weapon normally. It wouldn't be used for long-term securing of a weapon (obviously it can be disassembled to be sold to someone else illicitly), but would be useful in situations where there is a high risk of someone stealing your weapon from you there and then, such as a prison or checkpoint, or to prevent small children in a household from firing it accidentally. Having the chip safe vs unsafe would depend on a risk analysis of having it lock under unauthorized use (but thus letting it fire accidentally if dropped), or having it unlock when picked up by someone with the right bioelectrics/heat signature/pheromone, but at the increased, if limited, risk of a false negative preventing legitimate use.

Power could be provided by a piezoelectric generator, or a watch battery, assuming the sensor technology is ultralow voltage. (For batteries, maintenance would be the same as regularly maintaining your pistol anyway.) The sensor itself wouldn't need to match perfectly, just well-enough that 95% percent of people on Earth couldn't pick it up and use it (5% risk of someone who actually picks up your gun has a similar signature and a false positive. Better than 100% chance of them being able to use it unrestricted). Other considerations could be EM interference, localized hacking, etc, but those could be mitigated through different means.

Look, I'm no expert in any field relating to this, it just seems like a cool idea to me with the right design and expectations of its intended function. I feel any attempt to make them mandatory would be an unwise decision; rather let the buyer decide what his/her/their needs are, and market/innovate accordingly.

You would still have a problem with legal gun owners accidentally shooting someone while intoxicated. Fortunately there is a solution for this as well. Build a breathalizer into the barrel of the gun. You simply blow into the barrel of your gun. If you are sober, it will unlock for normal use. If you are drunk, it will immediately fire off a round to ensure the problem will never happen again.

Magorn:Because every time someone breaks into your house you have less than second from the tim eyou grab your gun until he uses his ninja-like reflexes to acquire you in the dark and fatally shoot you? Hell if all the tech did was force you to spend an extra second assessing the situation before making a shoot/ don't shoot decision it might prevent a lot of tragedy.

According to FBI gunfight data 90+% of all gun fights are over in less than 3 seconds.....and you want me to give up a third of that time in advantage to the person shooting at me?

dittybopper:Straw purchases have a very specific meaning: A gun is purchased by Person X specifically for Person Y. A gun purchased by Person X, then sold to Person Y a few years later is *NOT* a straw purchase.

Thank you for the link, but damn that does make the problem even more complicated. I do take exception to this passage:

Critics say that Obama and gun control advocates who cited the report failed to mention that only 7,200 of the roughly 30,000 guns seized by Mexican authorities in 2008 were sent to ATF for tracing.

Scott Stewart, an analyst for global intelligence company STRATFOR, wrote that only 4,000 of those were traceable. Of those, 3,480 were linked back to the United States. Using those numbers, 12 percent of the guns confiscated in 2008 were positively traced to the United States.

The statistical conclusion to reach from this, if you treat the 7200 as a representative sample of the 30K weapons, that only 55% of crime-linked guns are traceable at all but among those 87% were traced to the US. Either the writer missed the point of sampling in statistics or there's a lot that he failed to describe about the 22,800 unexamined weapons.

way south:Xcott: Apparently the consensus is that this idea won't work, because today's computers take seconds to process a kilobyte of data, all the while making clockwork noises.

Imagine you have a cell phone, and imagine you leave that cell phone in your pocket or in a safe and it goes unused and uncharged for months or even years at a time.Now imagine that you must pull out that cell phone in an emergency.If it doesn't turn on and dial out, you will die.

How much faith do you have in your cell phone?

That's a silly question. I don't trust my cell phone because it's very complicated---it's a general purpose computer---it depends on an unreliable service, and it drains lots of power just to sit there idle. It's also designed by people who don't care how long it takes to power up and figure out what it's supposed to do.

None of that would be true for a biometric gun lock or an RFID lock. We're talking a single-purpose device that can be engineered to perform its function immediately rather than spending 30 seconds booting into Linux. The problem is not unreliable technology, but the inherent miss and false-alarm rate of biometric algorithms.

I have lots of electronic gizmos that I trust to work perfectly even after they spend years sitting in a basement. This includes old computers: I have a Commodre PET CBM from 1978, and despite my immense distrust in the reliability of modern computers, I know this thing will spring to life with a happy cheep-cheep every time I flip the switch.

I didn't read the comments in this thread yet, but this is a amazingly stupid idea. Any gun that is actually usable has to be able to be broken down for cleaning. Meaning, you take it apart. You really think adding parts to control use works for a device that is a) at its essence an extremely simple mechanism and b) made to be taken apart easily?

Besides, the only part of a gun that is difficult at all to manufacture is the barrel, especially the shape of the chamber. Everything else you could make in a garage with hand-tools and a few hours of time. And the barrels in these "smart guns" still have to be normal gun barrels - and have to be removable for cleaning.

You could put an RFID in a ring on your finger. Of course if you forget to wear the ring then you are farked.

This. Although not perfect, it would be simple, practical, and inexpensive to implement.

...and trivial to bypass. Gun mechanisms are actually a very old technology, easily mastered. AK47 type rifles can for the most part be produced in a home shop or garage (and look like it :)

This article is exactly the same sort of fantasy as a world where guns being banned results in no one (criminals or otherwise) having them. The logical arguments make sense if you accept the first premise of the author, that it's possible to make a gun like in the movie (IN A MOVIE, FFS) that only permits its use by the "real" owner and is foolproof.

In reality, systems that do this have been around for a long time and been sold with varying degrees of success. As mentioned by someone above, they're all pretty trivial to bypass. The only real use for them is preventing someone from grabbing your gun and using it on you during a home invasion or other short term situation.

Anyone having more than a few minutes' time to bypass the mechanism can do so, and thereafter use the weapon. They can even replace or re-set the mechanism so it "only" works for them.

Guns (pistols, rifles, firearms, or whatever) exist and they can't be made to un exist. We can't get rid of all of them any more than we can get rid of the idea of hitting someone with a stick, and we can't make a really hard wish like this author is doing and change the way the technology works, either. We have to live with the fact that this stuff exists, and deal with it.

Xcott:way south: Xcott: Apparently the consensus is that this idea won't work, because today's computers take seconds to process a kilobyte of data, all the while making clockwork noises.

Imagine you have a cell phone, and imagine you leave that cell phone in your pocket or in a safe and it goes unused and uncharged for months or even years at a time.Now imagine that you must pull out that cell phone in an emergency.If it doesn't turn on and dial out, you will die.

How much faith do you have in your cell phone?

That's a silly question. I don't trust my cell phone because it's very complicated---it's a general purpose computer---it depends on an unreliable service, and it drains lots of power just to sit there idle. It's also designed by people who don't care how long it takes to power up and figure out what it's supposed to do.

None of that would be true for a biometric gun lock or an RFID lock. We're talking a single-purpose device that can be engineered to perform its function immediately rather than spending 30 seconds booting into Linux. The problem is not unreliable technology, but the inherent miss and false-alarm rate of biometric algorithms.

I have lots of electronic gizmos that I trust to work perfectly even after they spend years sitting in a basement. This includes old computers: I have a Commodre PET CBM from 1978, and despite my immense distrust in the reliability of modern computers, I know this thing will spring to life with a happy cheep-cheep every time I flip the switch.

So you think that rdfi readers don't need bateries and that the electronic guts will be milspec and not Chinese?

Xcott:I have lots of electronic gizmos that I trust to work perfectly even after they spend years sitting in a basement

But your life isn't dependent on them and the rigors of sitting in a basement are only half of what a firearm might face.Up until recent years you could still start a mini shiatstorm on gun forums over things like red dot sights. Those aren't much more than a laser diode, some glass bits, and a battery.

You're going to walk up to people who write page after page of argument around what the proper length of an AR's gas tube is supposed to be (because of some little known mechanical bug that might maybe cause the hint of an error... sometimes) and you're going to say "here, put this little black box into your trigger assembly. Don't worry, its legit. I had the government test it!".

You should use your middle finger. Seriously. I forget the name of this style, but the idea behind it is to lay your index finger alongside the barrel, pointing forward, and use your middle finger to fire. The idea is that humans have the innate ability to point their middle finger accurately at just about anything. It is not good if you are trying to shoot coins or nail that bull's eye ring, but for larger targets it is supposed to be quite accurate.

Sure, great idea. I love it when the slide slices off most of my index finger.

dittybopper:timujin: dittybopper: timujin: This concept has been out for a long time, well before this movie. I remember reading about prototypes back in the late 90's or early 00's. I think they were looking into it for law enforcement at the time, so criminals couldn't take a cop's gun.

Actually, no.

New Jersey enacted a version of the law that requires all handguns sold in the state to be "smart guns" 3 years after their attorney general decides they are commercially available and safe to use. The police are exempt from the requirement.

Every version of it I've heard proposed at the state and federal level exempts police and military.

Gee, I wonder why?

That particular law or even "every version of it you've heard" doesn't make what I wrote untrue. In the article I was reading, they were talking about using this for cops, specifically because they didn't want criminals taking a cop's gun. Now, this was a long time ago, at least a decade, so maybe the general philosophy is different now, but it doesn't change what I read.

What you read was an incorrect justification for the development of the technology, either by someone who just didn't know what they were writing about, or in order to put one over on the rubes.

Or, again, perhaps that was the initial justification, one maybe the manufacturers were using when prototyping the technology when the article was written and, later, that changed due to feedback from law enforcement.

You seem to be stuck in a "because this is the way it is now, such has it ever been" mentality.

timujinThis concept has been out for a long time, well before this movie. I remember reading aboutprototypes back in the late 90's or early 00's. I think they were looking into it for law enforcementat the time, so criminals couldn't take a cop's gun.

hariseldon:timujinThis concept has been out for a long time, well before this movie. I remember reading aboutprototypes back in the late 90's or early 00's. I think they were looking into it for law enforcementat the time, so criminals couldn't take a cop's gun.

That makes a lot of sense, a cop certainly doesn't want their weapon fritzing out when they need it most. Disturbing they want to make this mandatory for citizens, though, as the same thing is true for them.

meanmutton:dittybopper: meanmutton: padraig: heypete: Two guns that I own came with magazine disconnects: they wouldn't fire if the magazine was removed. Naturally, those were the first things I removed and the guns have run perfectly and without issue since then.

Not being a gun owner myself, why did you feel this was something that you needed to do ?

I am a gun owner and can't imagine why he'd feel the need to do this -- unless you do speed shooting competition?

It breeds laziness.

I saw some of that argument later and honestly, it's a tough pill for me to swallow. But then again, I'm from the school of thought that you treat a weapon you've personally unloaded and verified as unloaded the same you do as if it's loaded -- you never sweep the barrel past someone, you don't walk around with your finger on the trigger, you keep the barrel pointed down, etc.

It is a detriment to the use of the firearm as a defensive weapon in the event a situation requires that you reload. Shooting to slide-lock is stupid. If you reload with a round in the chamber, your firearm should still be usable during the reload, and you should not stop observing the situation and reacting accordingly while you reload. A magazine disconnect removes the efficacy of the firearm as a defensive weapon while reloading.

/same applies to offense, but I have never been in a situation where I needed to consider a firearm as an offensive weapon, only as a defensive weapon or a sporting tool.

Guns have had a variety of safety mechanisms mainstreamed over the years. Many guns have multiple safety mechanisms required to be manually engaged in order fire (i.e. grip safeties). All of these devices increased the complexity of the weapon, therefore increasing the chances for a failure. They also inherently increased the cost of the weapon. I'm sure a similar Fark thread could have been started when "drop safeties" came about as well (had the interwebs existed).

I could forsee something along these lines also coming about, though obviously the technology level would have to be such that implementation led to an acceptable rate of "failure to fire" incidents. I assure you that most legitimate gun owners love nothing more than an excuse to buy yet another weapon and get rid of a safe queen. I would happily purchase such a handgun were it available on the market today.

Of course if you are the type that likes to drive your vintage 1908 Model T without seatbelts, ABS or airbags because it is a more pure driving experience and you can't stand the government trying to tell you how to be safe, then by all means...carry on

way south:Xcott: I have lots of electronic gizmos that I trust to work perfectly even after they spend years sitting in a basement

But your life isn't dependent on them and the rigors of sitting in a basement are only half of what a firearm might face.

My life is dependent on some of them, like the smoke alarm, the CO detector, and most of the embedded systems in my car. They work year after year with minimal maintenance. In particular, the systems in my car are expected to react instantaneously, like the airbag controller and the anti-lock brake controller.

Also, it's silly to talk about the rigors a firearm might face. If I'm using a firearm for home defense, where this kind of gadget would be useful, I'm not going to be carrying it through a jungle or dropping it in a swamp between the bedroom and the landing. If your firearm is going to be used in extreme conditions, just don't use the lock.

Virtue:Magorn: Because every time someone breaks into your house you have less than second from the tim eyou grab your gun until he uses his ninja-like reflexes to acquire you in the dark and fatally shoot you? Hell if all the tech did was force you to spend an extra second assessing the situation before making a shoot/ don't shoot decision it might prevent a lot of tragedy.

According to FBI gunfight data 90+% of all gun fights are over in less than 3 seconds.....and you want me to give up a third of that time in advantage to the person shooting at me?

I've got to ask: When does that clock start ticking? From when the first shot is fired? From when you first see the enemy? Is that average being heavily weighed down by people who were shot and never even saw the attacker? If you're going to toss out a stat like that, the methodology would be appreciated. Not that 3 seconds sounds unreasonable, but it's too vague to be interesting.

Mikeyworld:There isn't a trigger safety that can stop a gun from killing someone when they want you dead. The safest thing that could done to protect the citizenry from wanton acts of gun violence is to make any use of firearms in the commission of a crime punishable by death. Yes, the death penalty for using a firearm while committing a crime. There has to be a conviction on the crime before this can be enacted, but it would thin the herd a little (there will always be those who will have guns, just less of them).

/any crime will do. It's the gun that counts//also, register and limit bullets///

So what happens in those cases where a citizen intends on protecting their home and loved ones and is convicted of assault/manslaughter/murder because they "pursued" the criminal or were not found to be threatened sufficiently to warrant the use of lethal force? They just get snuffed and the criminal walks?

As far as registering and limiting bullets, come at me bro, I'm behind 7 casting molds and have a reloading press. Your stupidity hurts me physically. I use more ammunition in a month than you probably think a law-abiding-citizen has any use for in a year.

ProfessorOhki:Virtue: Magorn: Because every time someone breaks into your house you have less than second from the tim eyou grab your gun until he uses his ninja-like reflexes to acquire you in the dark and fatally shoot you? Hell if all the tech did was force you to spend an extra second assessing the situation before making a shoot/ don't shoot decision it might prevent a lot of tragedy.

According to FBI gunfight data 90+% of all gun fights are over in less than 3 seconds.....and you want me to give up a third of that time in advantage to the person shooting at me?

I've got to ask: When does that clock start ticking? From when the first shot is fired? From when you first see the enemy? Is that average being heavily weighed down by people who were shot and never even saw the attacker? If you're going to toss out a stat like that, the methodology would be appreciated. Not that 3 seconds sounds unreasonable, but it's too vague to be interesting.

Given that the same study found the distance involved in the gunfight tends to be 7-10 feet, I would guess it's when the first guy clears leather.

Apparently in most of Farkistan bad people are pointing guns at you 24/7 and the only way to prevent this is to be better and faster at taking them down before you get taken down. Safest thing to do is to remove yourself from situations like these.

If you have to face a situation like this, I really hope everything turns out for the best.

/Gun Owner//You guys are silly the world would be worse off if it was COD

Not when grabbing a gun away from someone and turning on them, you cant disconnect it then and there when it counts, so. yeah. bad argument bro. If someone takes my gun from me, it is sure would be great if they couldn't shoot me with it, that's just embarrassing not to mention painful. So you are correct if someone stole your gun and took it to a home workshop or something yes they can disconnect the locking mechanism, but in any other situation it's a definite plus to have that kind of control.

The problem as some have stated is that an identity check is great but you don't want it to EVER interfere with the operation of the gun, pull the trigger gun goes bang anything else is more risk than a person shooting a gun is going to want to take. The security must be almost completely fail proof. Under what situations would the security make the gun useless even to the authorize operator? That's the big question for gun owners, police officers, and hopefully politicians who consider these kinds of security devices for their officers and constituents.

timujin:hariseldon: timujinThis concept has been out for a long time, well before this movie. I remember reading aboutprototypes back in the late 90's or early 00's. I think they were looking into it for law enforcementat the time, so criminals couldn't take a cop's gun.

That makes a lot of sense, a cop certainly doesn't want their weapon fritzing out when they need it most. Disturbing they want to make this mandatory for citizens, though, as the same thing is true for them.

Also, what happens when the company pushes an update that happens to coincide with someone trying to defend themselves? Do you have to wait for the download and restart to proceed?

Xcott:Also, it's silly to talk about the rigors a firearm might face. If I'm using a firearm for home defense, where this kind of gadget would be useful, I'm not going to be carrying it through a jungle or dropping it in a swamp between the bedroom and the landing. If your firearm is going to be used in extreme conditions, just don't use the lock.

Target practice means setting off hundreds of explosions that produce heat and chemical contamination right next to whatever mechanism is uses to fire or not fire the bullet.

With the way guns have been built for the past 150 years the whole idea does not pan out. The only way to stop a gun from firing is to stop the firing pin from hitting the primer. So you are going to need some kind of interface that flips on the safety weather by a solenoid to apply a physical safety or make a completely electronic trigger group using either electric primers or a solenoid or similar mechanism to strike the primer.

When you have a mechanical safety controlled by electronics you have the problem that to be safe the gun must have the mechanism locked until the trigger is pulled or else removing the battery defeats the system. And unless the whole trigger group is constructed in some pretty exotic ways you will be able to defeat it in the amount of time it takes to disassemble the upper and destroy that mechanism.

If you have an electronic trigger group you have all the issues of electronics plus you probably need to buy proprietary ammo. There are thick books of proprietary cartridges that are no longer made so I can't see any government agency re-arming their forces with a gun that might be impossible to source ammo for in a few years. And civilians don't want the stuff so I can't see it being made with them in mind.

Until electronic primers become common or caseless electronic guns get way cheaper this is not going to fly.

dittybopper:padraig: heypete: Two guns that I own came with magazine disconnects: they wouldn't fire if the magazine was removed. Naturally, those were the first things I removed and the guns have run perfectly and without issue since then.

Not being a gun owner myself, why did you feel this was something that you needed to do ?

Magazine disconnects aren't a substitute for sane gun handling, and in fact they can be dangerous: Someone used to guns with magazine disconnects is the sort of person who has accidental discharges with guns that don't have them. Magazine disconnects encourage laziness, where people won't check the chamber because the gun won't fire without a magazine in it (probably).

You should *ALWAYS* check the chamber of a gun. If you do that, then a magazine disconnect is superfluous: You know there isn't a round chambered because either the gun was truly empty, or you ejected the one round left in the gun when you racked the slide back to check the chamber.

My military buddies all hate them because all you have to do to disable a gun with one is hit the mag release. Granted, that has a pretty miniscule chance of actually happening, but it is still a con without a corresponding pro.

I don't like them because it makes it a PITA to de-cock my gun after clearing it. Pull the mag, rack the slide, check the chamber, drop the slide, then either re-insert an empty mag (which I may need to empty, I tend to keep them full) so I can lower the hammer, or put it away with the hammer back (which I don't like doing).

MasterPython:With the way guns have been built for the past 150 years the whole idea does not pan out. The only way to stop a gun from firing is to stop the firing pin from hitting the primer. So you are going to need some kind of interface that flips on the safety weather by a solenoid to apply a physical safety or make a completely electronic trigger group using either electric primers or a solenoid or similar mechanism to strike the primer.

It's been so long that I can't remember if it was a design, prototype, or failed production, but I remember reading about a gun with a trigger safety much like any other, with the exception that instead of the operators finger disengaging it, it was moved by a magnet located in a ring on the trigger finger. The only real fail points were your standard mechanical failure (no more likely than a failure of any other trigger safety), or enough crud buildup that would keep the magnet from being able to move the safety. I don't think I've seen any 'automatic user-only safety' that I would trust more than that, but I'm still not entirely sure I'd trust it.

And if you're patient you can pick up pistols from Gunbroker.com for under $100 (+$20 shipping +$35 transfer fee), You could go to your local dealer and fund any number of used pistols for under $200. You just can't be picky.

dittybopper:Every version of it I've heard proposed at the state and federal level exempts police and military.

Ironic, actually, when you consider that a fair number of cops are shot with their own guns. This is the exact kind of situation where this sort of device would actually save lives.

But five minutes after a gun is taken from its registered user, all bets are off. Because that's about how long it would take to rip out the "safety" device and turn the gun into a regular "unsafe" gun.

That is a possibility; but, as it stands, even the cheapest guns I know about are $250-$350. That's a huge investment for poor people.

The real goal is probably to increase the cost of all firearms; so it's expensive for everyone but rich people.

NIB Hi Point $180

And if you're patient you can pick up pistols from Gunbroker.com for under $100 (+$20 shipping +$35 transfer fee), You could go to your local dealer and fund any number of used pistols for under $200. You just can't be picky.

Loadmaster:So can this device be programmed for me and all of the members of my immediate family who are old enough to shoot guns? Or just me?

If they managed to make it work for one person (and it was digital) expanding it to multiple users would be trivial. I don't think finger scanners even really output the finger image, they just create some sort of unique hashcode, so each additional person would simply be that key checked against another stored code. You're talking on the order of nanoseconds difference in unlock time added per user..

ProfessorOhki:Loadmaster: So can this device be programmed for me and all of the members of my immediate family who are old enough to shoot guns? Or just me?

If they managed to make it work for one person (and it was digital) expanding it to multiple users would be trivial. I don't think finger scanners even really output the finger image, they just create some sort of unique hashcode, so each additional person would simply be that key checked against another stored code. You're talking on the order of nanoseconds difference in unlock time added per user..

And it has to cost less than $10. You won the contract congratulations!